Earth is Safe From 'Global Warming' Say the Men Who Put Man on the Moon

The planet is not in danger of catastrophic man made global warming. Even if we burn all the world’s recoverable fossil fuels it will still only result in a temperature rise of less than 1.2 degrees C.

“It’s an embarrassment to those of us who put NASA’s name on the map to have people like James Hansen popping off about global warming,” says the project’s leader Hal Doiron.

Doiron was one of 40 ex NASA employees – including seven astronauts – who wrote in April 2012 to NASA administrator Charles Bolden protesting about the organization’s promotion of climate change alarmism, notably via its resident environmental activist James Hansen.

During his stint as head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Hansen tirelessly promoted Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. He retired last year to spend more time on environmental campaigning and has twice been arrested with former mermaid impersonator Darryl Hannah for his part in protests against surface coal mining and the Keystone XL pipe line. While still head of NASA GISS he once described trains carrying coal as “death trains” “no less gruesome than if they were carrying boxcars headed to crematoria and loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.” Many NASA employees and former employees found his views an embarrassment.

Using calculations by George Stegemeier of the National Academy of Engineering, they estimated the total quantity of recoverable oil, gas and coal on the planet. They then used 163 years of real world temperature data to calculate Transient Climate Sensitivity (ie how much the world will warm as a result of the burning of all the carbon dioxide in the fossil fuel). The figure they came up with 1.2 degrees C which is considerably lower than the wilder claims of the IPCC, whose reports have suggested it could be as high as 4 degrees C or more.

This is because, as scientists such as the Cato Institute’s Pat Michaels have long argued, “climate sensitivity” (ie how the planet’s temperature responds to CO2 emissions) is considerably lower than the IPCC’s computer models project. So much so that it should be called “climate insensitivity”, he believes.

Doiron is similarly sceptical of the computer models used by climate alarmists. He and his team argue that the 105 models currently used by the IPCC are seriously flawed because they don’t agree with each other and don’t agree with empirical data.

There is no empirical data indicating Anthropogenic Global Warming will produce catastrophic climate changes. AGW can only produce modest global warming, likely to be beneficial when CO2 benefits to crop production are considered.

Doiron says: “I believe in computer models. My whole career was about using computer models to make life or death decisions. In 1963 I had to use them to calculate whether, when the lunar module landed on a 12 degree slope it would fall over or not – and design the landing gear accordingly. But if you can’t validate the models – and the IPCC can’t – then don’t use them to make critical decisions about the economy and the planet’s future.”